Submitted photo. The Boardman girls bowling team poses with its state championship trophy on March 9 in Columbus.

BOARDMAN — From 2020 to 2023, the Boardman girls bowling team qualified for the tournament every season, but each time, they couldn’t put together a championship-level performance.

“I commend any team that goes to states the first time and wins it. I don’t know how you do that,” Boardman girls bowling head coach Justine Cullen said.

In 2020, the first of five consecutive state tournament appearances, Boardman finished in 10th. The Spartans jumped up to fifth in 2021, before a sixth-place finish in 2022 and 13th place last year.

The fifth time proved to be the charm, though, as the Spartans, using every bit of their tournament experience, emerged from Columbus on March 9 with a Division I team state championship, as well as an individual state title for junior Kaitlyn Greenaway.

Cullen believes the team’s prior trips to the state tournament properly prepared her team for what was to come in Columbus.

“They’re used to being in pressure situations, but the state tournament is just a whole different animal. You get announced, there’s a little bit of hoopla, there’s a little bit of pomp and circumstance to it. And that very first time you’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, we’re at the state level. We’re competing against the best,'” Cullen said. “But this whole team went through that last year, so they’ve already gone through the nerves. They’ve already had all those experiences. … Once we made the cut, their attitude about the whole day was kind of like, ‘Well, this is just another tournament.'”

Boardman, returning its entire team from last season, easily qualified for the eight-team championship bracket this year, placing first in the qualifying rounds to set up a quarterfinals matchup with Bellefontaine. The Spartans cruised to victory in the best-of-five baker series, which involved five bowlers on both teams who each bowl two frames, winning each of the three games to advance to the semifinals for only the second time in five years.

After dropping the first game of the semifinals to Macedonia Nordonia, Boardman won three consecutive games to get to the championship round and meet Troy. In the finals, the Spartans won the first two games before slipping up in the third, only for Greenaway to fittingly clinch the state championship with two strikes in the 10th frame.

“I think the bakers are our strength, and it’s mainly because my girls are so selfless in terms of how they play. They very much play for each other, and I think when they’re in those games, it’s sort of the ultimate team moment. You have to come together as a team and they always seem to do that,” Cullen said. “They’re just really good at supporting each other. When things go wrong, they lift each other up. When things are going right, they feed off the momentum of each other. I just think that the personality of my team, that’s where they thrive the most because it’s where they all have to come together.”

In addition to Greenaway, who threw a 245 in her third and final game to win the individual girls state title by a single pin over Wilmington’s Kylie Fisher, Boardman brought back Marissa Funk, Audrey Anderson, Gabby Vennetti, Emily Leonard and Lily Haase from its 2023 state tournament team. Funk earned second-team All-Ohio honors and finished 10th overall individually this season.

Cullen praised Funk’s improvement, in addition to her and Greenaway’s leadership, but she said the team needed everything that Vennetti, Leonard and Haase provided in Columbus.

“[Gabby’s] so good at — I would say she’s good at everything,” Cullen said. “And then Emily Leonard and Lily Haase — those two, in particular, throughout the year had moments, but at the state level, they had the best days of their life and they really carried us through. I’ll never sit here and say, Kate and Marissa are not leaders. They are. They are the core of the team and they perform every time, but what Emily and Lily did, we don’t win this without them. They had phenomenal days.”

With all five being juniors, Cullen and Boardman will have a very good chance to repeat as state champions with a team full of seniors. And with how determined her team has shown itself to be these past few years in pursuit of a state title, there is not much reason to believe Boardman girls bowling will not be even hungrier and better next year.

“They don’t really have egos about them. They all work very hard. And that’s kind of been our brands for the past decade almost,” Cullen said. “They always just want to be better, but for each other. And they always come in with the right attitude. They’re never satisfied. It’s always like, ‘Alright, how can I improve? What can I do the next day to be better than I was the day before?'”

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